The present invention relates to a protective housing structure for underground devices such as meters, control valves and the like. Thus, the present invention is particularly useful as a protective enclosure for devices which are commonly connected to subterranean conduits, particularly water conduit systems, for example those employed in lawn and garden sprinkling systems and other irrigation systems. However, the present invention made be employed in any analgous field wherein a device is desired to be protected from its underground environment while at the same time is accessible from above ground.
Underground protective housings have been employed for some time in protecting pumps, valves, meters and the like. Typically, these enclosures have open bottoms so that they can be positioned over the underground device with the top of the housing being flush or slightly above or below the ground level. A lid forms a cover permitting access to the device. Early protective housings were constructed of concrete, but, more recently, these protective housings have been fabricated from metal or plastic. One example of such a prior art enclosure is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,952,908 issued 27 Apr. 1976 to Carson. This patent discloses a meter box which is truncated in shape so that its sidewalls and endwalls converge from a bottom edge to an open top. The open top is covered by a lid having a handle portion so that the lid is removable to permit access to the device placed within the protective housing. Permanent openings are configured in the endwalls of the box so that subterranean conduit may be attached to the device contained therein. The basic housing described in this patent is modified by those enclosures shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,065,020 issued 27 Dec. 1977 and U.S. Pat. No. 4,153,176 issued 8 May 1979 to the same inventor.
A similar protective housing is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,163,503 issued 7 Aug. 1979 to McKennan. Again, this housing has a truncated shape and is provided with a specialized lid structure for enclosing the top. A pair of permanently configured openings are formed on oppositely disposed endwalls adjacent the open bottom of the housing. U.S. Pat. No. 3,984,023 issued 5 Oct. 1976 to Hodas discloses an underground protective housing in the form of a rectangular valve box that is made from separable walls which may be shipped in a dis-assembled state that may be readily assembled for on-site use. The utility meter container shown in U.S. Pat. No. 3,893,584 issued 8 July 1975 to Ledford is formed as three plastic parts which nest with one another for storage and shipment. A pair of service conduit couplers are attached, respectively, to the top and bottom of the container.
The above-described protective housings have proved suitable in the past for protecting a single underground device and, in some instances, have been successfully employed for housing a plurality of devices. In many sprinkler systems, a desired technique of installation is called manifolding which comprises the connection of several control valves in a side-by-side relation by means of standard-sized manifold tees. Recently, manifold tees had been especially designed to eliminate interconnecting pipes so that these manifold tees directly mate with one another in any desired serial configuration.
Due to the unitary configuration of the prior art housings described above, it is difficult if not impossible to enclose a plurality of serially connected manifold valves without the use of auxillary conduit between housing units. Furthermore, the prior art protective housings do not provide for the variety of geometric configurations desirable in interconnecting conduit and control devices. For example, while the above-described housing structures contemplate longitudinal conduits which enter through one end wall and exit through an opposite end wall, such housings do not provide for conduits exiting at a right angle to the entry conduit. This is a substantial disadvantage where manifold tees are employed since such manifold tees typically supply a plurality of distribution conduits that extend transverse to the longitudinal conduit to exit the protective housing at a right angle to discharge outlets. Furthermore, the existing housing structures do no provide for variance in vertical orientation of the interconnective conduits since they provide fixed conduit openings into the enclosure.
Accordingly, there remains a need for an improved underground protective housing which may receive and house various devices such as valves, meters, and the like which are connectable to underground interconnect elements such as pipe conduits and the like. There is a need for such a protective housing that may be employed with a variety of configurations and wherein a plurality of such housings may be ganged together in order to enclose a plurality of such underground devices. There is a further need to provide protective housing structure useful with manifold tees. There is a further need for such an enclosure which may be custom configured for the desired configuration of interconnect assemblies.